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At the court of Henry VIII at Whitehall Palace Holbein catered primarily to the sovereign's requests, but he also counted among his patrons and friends many courtiers who were eager to have their portraits made by the king's painter. Holbein began such portraits by capturing the likeness of the sitter on paper. While he had employed black and coloured chalks on unprimed paper during his first visit to England (1526-28), he worked up the drawings of his second stay in coloured chalks and pen and ink on pink primed paper that approximated the colour of flesh. His meticulous drawings were in turn used as cartoons - one-to-one scale images - to transfer the details of the sitter's features onto the prepared ground of a panel. Many of these drawings survived. The present drawing can be directly linked to a panel painting (1535, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York), perhaps representing Sir Ralph Sadler (1507-1587), a diplomat and administrator. There are indications that the drawing itself was used to make a tracing onto the grounded panel.
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